Quote:
Originally Posted by jambutty
It isn’t crime that is an obsolete issue but a debate on capital punishment that no longer exists in the UK.
But then why let facts get in the way making a reply?
This may come as a great shock to you but here in the UK we don’t have a fifth or any amendments. We don’t even have a constitution.
When capital punishment was legal in the UK the judge would set a date for the execution, which was months rather than years away. This was to allow for any last minute appeals for clemency. That is a long way short of a minimum of five years.
Why shouldn’t the accused be forced to take the stand? After all he is the one being accused of a crime. Witnesses have to take the stand and some under cross-examination have been known to end up admitting that they lied. To be a successful liar you have to live the lie and it is one thing doing so amongst your mates but quite another in open court.
I don’t give a Tinkers cuss for US law, this is the UK.
There is nothing as powerful as being cross-examined to get at the truth. There is only one person who knows the truth about a crime – the person who committed it.
Go on tell me about false confessions made under duress in the interview room. That is totally different to an open court where the jury and everybody else attending, including people in the gallery will see and hear how the cross-examination is conducted. The judge and jury will decide if the defendant ends up confessing because he was bullied into doing so or he tripped himself up by lying.
Highly unlikely or the other way around highly likely is good enough. In criminal law a person is guilty as charged if the evidence against him is beyond reasonable doubt and judges have been know to accept a 10 – 2 verdict of guilt or innocence. So highly likely or unlikely is well established in law and acceptable.
Even in a civil court the verdict is based on the balance of probabilities. Sort of highly unlikely or likely! Not a certainty in sight.
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Of course England has a constitution. It's not a document that one can buy in a bookstore, a nice thick Penguin classic, with "Constitution" written on it, but the centuries of common law, precedent, and statute law. And what form of govt does the UK have? A Constitutional Monarchy. And just because there is no clause called a fifth ammendment does not mean that it doesn't exist in England in fact and in practice.
And this silliness of having an accused forced to take the stand. How does one "force" if not by using the "duress" mentioned in another place in your post? And how does one force an accused to tell the truth? Thumbscrews?
And in a subsequent post you talk about the "law" as if it is the final word. That it somehow has the divine sanction of the decalogue. It is firmly in the English tradition where it began, and in all the legal systems of democratic countries, that some laws are, in essence, illegal. The idea of "ultra vires" gives the judiciaries the right to judge the legality of laws. The US supreme court is an fine example.
Ever since Nuremberg, the democratic communities of the world, seem to agree that just because a certain govt passes "laws" this does not mean that they are "legal" or "just" in the wider sense.